Hero's Choice
by Osidiano
Summary: Written for Qu ko with Yubel!Johan & self-mutilation. After their fusion, Yubel knows his darkest thoughts and greatest fears. In a demonstration of twisted devotion, Juudai is plagued by nightmares of white wastelands and a young man that he cannot save.


**Disclaimer/Notes:** I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh!: GX, or any of the characters here, unless otherwise mentioned. I do not own Kazuki Takahashi, and no money is being made off of this piece of fiction. This story was written solely for Qu_ko's entertainment, and no copyright infringement was intended. Please, do not sue. All original ideas are original (duh) and belong to me, unless otherwise mentioned. This story takes place sometime after Yubel and Juudai fuse together, but otherwise has no set place in the timeline, and contains violence, self-mutilation, and some delicious cannibalism. Q, please enjoy.

**Hero's Choice**

He is wandering through that desert nightmare again; the wind blasts sand into his face and his feet slip on the shifting dunes with every unsteady step. Juudai coughs, covering his mouth with his sleeve and trying to breathe through the thick fabric of his Duel Academy jacket. It seems like he ends up in this strange place every night, but he can never remember how he gets there. One moment, he is laying in his dorm room in Osiris red, the floorboards cool against his back and the sunlight coming in from the window growing steadily dimmer. Then, without warning, he has to close his eyes to keep that whirlwind sand from gouging the delicate visceral jelly out of his eyeballs. He had decided a long time ago—or maybe it was yesterday, but time had seemed strange ever since coming back from the Dark World—that this horrific, empty landscape must have been the result of some terrible dream.

Or memory, but he tried so hard not to think about what the Dark World had looked like when he was done marching his armies across it.

Juudai pauses at the top of the dune ridge line, cracking his eyes open to thin slits in an attempt to survey his surroundings. Maybe he can find shelter this time. Last time, he had wandered for what seemed like days, until the wind and sand ripped the skin from his face and hands, cauterizing his wounds with mud, and he blacked out from pain only to reawaken in his dorm room hacking, sore, and severely dehydrated. The hero looks out over the desert, but sees only more sand, rolling and twisting into the white-hot horizon where the sun is perpetually setting but night never comes with its cool relief. He steps down off the top of the ridge line, half-sliding, half-falling down the side of the dune.

What else can he do but walk?

There is a dark smear in the distance in front of Juudai when he looks up, although he is unsure how he could have missed it. It is the only other thing in the desert, standing out there like some kind of tiny black monument placed just to spite the rest of the white, white world. But there is something comforting in that, he thinks: black is such a safe color, and shadows always turn out to be friends when he needs them most. He takes another deep breath through his sleeve, and heads towards the indistinct figure.

* * *

"Johan. . ." Juudai's voice sounds scratchy and hoarse, a little too low as he forces the name from between parched lips. His gaze catches on pale skin and teal hair, on the quiet, thoughtful expression on his friend's face. He relaxes when he notices the familiar uniform, always a little odd because it's not quite regulation, but he never has the heart to tell the transfer student that only the senior girls wear those Obelisk blue vests and the ruffled lavender shirt does not help the rumors about what European boys must be like where he's from. The wind begins to die down, and the hero lowers his arm from his face, the sand swirling around their ankles as they stand there. It is almost as if they are waiting, he thinks, for someone to claim the first turn of a duel. Juudai licks his lips, and reaches out for the other boy. "Hey, what are you doing out here?"

"Juudai, do you love me?" It is a jarring, strange question from that mouth, the corners of which are turned down in a frown. Juudai's hand stops just short of Johan's shoulder, his fingers trembling. It isn't like Johan to talk like that; his Japanese might not be the best, but surely he knows better than to talk about love like that. People don't talk about love unless there's something really wrong. Juudai knows this better than anyone, because only people who are dying or crazy talk about love. He tries to swallow, but his throat is tight and dry and the action aggravates more than it alleviates the apprehensive feeling he has.

"Jo-Johan. . .? Don't talk like that—"

"You don't love me, right?" Johan continues with a smile, and he chuckles, shaking his head before he continues. "I'm glad. . . it's because there's only one person that you can ever love, right?"

"S-stop it. . ." _This isn't right_, he thinks, and he grabs the other boy by the shoulders, peering into his face. "What's wrong with you? Johan—"

"Isn't it something that we should talk about?" he asks, and their eyes meet. All that Juudai can think is that somehow, something has gone very, _very _wrong. The gaze that meets his own is mismatched, amber-orange and dark turquoise blue. Those are not Johan's eyes, but that was his voice and this is his face and these are his shoulders warm beneath Juudai's hands. The hero's breath catches painfully in his throat and, for a moment, he cannot respond. It is not Johan, he tells himself. It looks and sounds and _feels_ like Johan, but it is not, and it cannot be, Johan. The teal-haired boy tilts his head to one side, regarding the former tyrant with some vague mixed emotion like affection and pity. "About us? About _me_?"

". . ._Yubel_," he exhales the name, and the sound is almost lost in the whirr of shifting sand as the wind begins to pick itself back up. Juudai can feel his heart racing, pounding against his ribcage so hard that he worries his bones might shatter. If Yubel is here, then where is Johan? Did he not save him, back in the Dark World? He remembers dueling, and he remembers deaths, but suddenly, in his panic and his fear and his disbelief, he does not remember seeing Johan when they returned to Duel Academy at long last. It happened, though. . .didn't it?

"It's all right. You don't have to answer. I know that you love me, because you hurt me, Juudai," the smile that accompanies these words is twisted, higher on one side than the other, an odd caricature of amusement. The not-Johan chuckles after that, leaning forward in the hero's grasp. He reaches up and wraps strong fingers around Juudai's neck, the web of flesh between thumb and forefinger pressing lightly against the other boy's Adam's apple. "We share our pain, and that's love. Isn't it beautiful, our love?"

"What are you doing?" He aches when he sees Yubel like this, still playing the part of puppet master even when they are alone in the darkness of his heart. Surely, that is what this white desert is. Or maybe it is purgatory, or the revenge of thousands for the lives that he destroyed as the Warrior of Darkness. Yubel is here to punish him, of this Juudai is certain. She plays with the body of his friend because she knows that it bothers him to see her eyes peering out from Johan's face, to hear her words coming from Johan's lips. Those hands at his throat tighten ever so slightly, and Juudai lowers his own hands from Johan's shoulders, letting them slide off down the other boy's arms until they return to his sides.

"I love you," Johan sighs, but it's not Johan because he knows that it's really Yubel speaking in that breathy, desperately needy tone. "You've hurt me so much, my beloved. . .I don't know how I will ever be able to share this much pain with you."

Johan pushes him then, and Juudai tries to step back, to give ground, but his feet are clumsy and unresponsive. He trips, and they topple to the sand. He chokes on the wind and the grit that finds its way into his mouth, coughing and struggling to breathe, closing his eyes against the rising storm. Those hands are still at his throat, and he can feel Johan shift beside him, crawling on top of him to sit, straddling his stomach just above the waistband of his stonewashed jeans.

"Tell me what it takes to hurt you."

"Yubel, please, don't—"

—_Don't hurt him_. The unspoken plea hangs in the air between, heavy and ominous as they both realize what this means. Juudai opens his eyes to thin slits to look up at the foreigner, who smiles and leans down to kiss his forehead, murmuring sweet nothings that he cannot hear over the wind.

Yubel releases his neck, placing the hand instead on his chest, pushing him down into the sand while the other is raised to the borrowed face. A broken fingernail is pressed into the corner of Johan's eye, digging into the tear duct before beginning to pull down, stretching the skin until it rips. Juudai cannot bring himself to turn away or stop it; he stares in unblinking horror at the way the blood wells up beneath the nail and swells around the pale finger. He follows its path once it spills over the ragged edge where the flesh is split, looking too bright and too red as it slides down the other boy's face. Yubel forces Johan's hand to follow the trail the blood leaves behind as it travels past his mouth and hits his jawline to drip off onto the hero below.

"I want to be inside you," Johan whispers, the skin peeling and bunching where it collects beneath the nail. The sand in Juudai's eyes hurts and feels scratchy, but he does not blink. He cannot look past the falling droplets that spatter against his cheek or that crazy, lopsided grin of hers as she pinches the mutilated skin between thumb and forefinger. Yubel pulls it off her puppet and lowers the stained hand to Juudai's trembling lips like an offering. "_Taste_ _me._"

The hero has no time to respond as the fingers claw past his lips and are forced into his mouth. He can feel the wet, tattered end of Johan's flesh on his tongue, the blood heavy like copper and clogging his throat. Juudai's vision goes hazy at the edges where he tears up when he refuses to blink the swirling grit away, and he gags. His hands snap up to push the foreigner back, thudding into the other boy's chest and stomach. But Johan does not move. Johan. . .Johan would not do this. Was Johan even in there, somewhere? There had to be a way to reach him, to save him. Juudai thrashes, unable to breathe and trying not to vomit. He grips the other boy by the biceps, squeezing hard.

"Do you like it?"

Yubel presses those ashy fingers deeper into him, leaning in closer with head canted to one side. Juudai can see darker skin peering through the bloody slash down Johan's face, as if Yubel was wearing his friend like some sort of cheap mask. The hero tries to cough around the intrusive digits, unable to bring himself to bite her. To bite _him_. Juudai did not want to hurt him; hadn't he put Johan through enough already? His jaw was beginning to ache from being stretched too wide, his eyes burning from the white sand. He could feel those fingers scratching at the back of his throat. The smile twisted briefly and was replaced with a scowl. "_Swallow_."

The hero gags again as she leans forward, her weight on the hand in his mouth. His fist slams into Johan's sternum, blasting the air from the foreigner's lungs. Yubel's scowl fell with a pained gasp, the borrowed mouth open and jaw working in a futile attempt to inhale past the shock. The tension in Johan's arm is lost, the fingers going limp and the scrap of flesh released. Juudai uses the opportunity to force the other boy's arm back, swallowing reflexively. He pushes Johan off of him and rolls to his side, trying to force himself to vomit, to bring it back up, but to no avail. The hero squeezes his eyes shut against the sand and the wind and begs his body to return it.

He tries not to think of how easily it went down or how it tasted like nothing once off his tongue.

Beside him, there is the sound of shifting as Johan struggles to breathe. A glance back reveals the foreigner bent over on his knees with his forehead pressed against the white sand, and Juudai can see those wide, mismatched eyes watering, spilling over; the sand clumps in the wet trails left behind on the pale cheek. He wants to reach out to the boy out of habit, and almost does before his gaze focuses past the tears to the colored irises and the wave of concern that he feels for him begins to recede. That is not Johan, he tells himself, even though it reacts like Johan, like a little boy playing hero games without any knowledge of the danger. Johan was not a savior, not a warrior the way that Juudai is: he is a pretender at the round table of the league of justice. He is fragile and needs to be protected from all the villains that hunt them.

And Juudai _wants _to protect him, to save him, to keep him from being martyred for some dark and torturous purpose. Even in this white nightmare, there had to be a way to force Yubel out of him once more. Juudai sets his jaw resolutely and begins to stand. He could play this game, too, if that was what was needed of him. He could be dirty and underhanded, could manipulate others to get his way when a darkness that did not bow to him obstructed his path.

He is the Warrior of Darkness, the champion against the forces of the Light, after all. He was fairly certain that he could do anything he wanted. Juudai's steps are slow and cautious, sliding his feet forward through the sand towards Johan's trembling form. His eyes are locked on the other boy and his shadow possessor. There is no need for fear, no need for anger. A familiar chilly, hollow feeling is taking up residence in his chest, apathy seeping out through his veins into his limbs, twitching into his fingertips listlessly. It is his adulthood, harnessing his latent power; it is Growing Up. He is surrendering to the tyrant that he was always meant to become.

But then something grabs him roughly by the ankle, and Yubel twists her puppet's gasping mouth up into a cruel smile, a predatory action that is more baring of teeth than expression of human emotion. Juudai jerks his head down to see what he has overlooked, what has caught him now. His eyes widen at the sight of the pallid hand that grips his pant leg, the strong, thin arm raising up and the end of one black sleeve disappearing into the ground. It—the creature, the monster, the sun-deprived hellspawn owner of the hand—pulls itself up from beneath the sands where it was long ago buried, using Juudai as leverage. The gold behind his vision fades into the background noise of his own screaming as black hair and a scowling mouth are exhumed.

He can smell it as it begins to crawl up his body, stinking like rot and soured sauces. The sand falls away in running rivulets off its shoulders, leaving its dark jacket dusty and gray. Juudai steps back to recenter himself as its cold, dead fingers clutch briefly at his waist and shirt, scratching at his chest through the fabric. It lurches to a standing position and clamps its hands down on the hero's shoulders.

Juudai tries to fight back against it, tries to push it away from him, but he cannot. His hands are shaking, his knees trembling. This shouldn't be happening. Where is the tyrant when he needs him most? He cannot call on his own darkness when he is choking on fear. Where are his Neospacians or his colorful posse of Elemental Heroes? In a comic book, this would have been the precise moment that he found the means for salvation. If this had been a comic book, his mind reassures him, he would have had backup, and someone big and strong, with their deep paternal tone and super powers, would have been there to give him a hand.

But it wasn't a comic book, and he, apparently, was not the hero of this nightmare.

He throws a wild punch that lands on the white devil's face, but does not feel the comforting connection of skin against skin. His knuckles sink deep into the tissue there, which grays upon contact and seems to dissolve at his touch. Its skin trickles off the jawline like the sand has only moments ago, leaving behind not shadows or bone but only that blinding white light Juudai associates with nothing.

Another hand, streaked and clumped with a blood and wet sand concoction, obstructs his view of the monster; the palm is pressed over his mouth and the fingers are splayed over his eyes with the tips digging into his brows and forehead. It squashes his nose and makes it hard to breathe again. His eyes dart over the black clad shoulder to where Johan had been kneeling, but there is nothing there. He had been too preoccupied to see him move. Juudai bites down on the fleshy bottom of the palm, feels his teeth click together on the other side. For a moment, he has the sickly ominous feeling that it might be possible to die in this place.

They pull the Academy's hero back down to the ground, and the monster holds him so that Johan's hands are free. Yubel laughs with that mouth and that voice that aren't hers, brings her red-stained hands back up to the borrowed face. Juudai has no choice but to watch as nails dig back into the tear, gouging it wider and wider, until she can fit four of the foreigner's fingers into it. She yanks back hard, and the skin rips and pulls back towards the boy's ear, sticking and clinging to the tissue beneath.

She is removing the mask that is Johan.

"Stop it! _Yubel, stop it_!" Juudai is crying because he does not want to see this and he does not want to cause this and—perhaps most of all—he does not want to admit that _he _can't do anything to make it go away. Johan sneers and stuffs the discarded flesh into his open mouth as he tries to beg her. He coughs, always choking. What did it feel like to remember how to breathe? What did it taste like before Johan? Bile, hot and burning in his throat, threatens to rise up, but he knows that if he vomits now he'll drown in it, and his immaculate sense of self-preservation saves him for the millionth time.

He swallows it whole, and the need to vomit subsides momentarily. The demon pinning him tightens its grip.

Yubel has pulled the skin up over the eye socket, has Johan's pretty fingers separating his forehead from the dark flesh that is purely her own beneath all his blood. Half the face is still European, is still pale along one side until it reaches Johan's brow, where a line has been jaggedly ripped across it. Juudai realizes too late that she intends to scalp the boy in front of him, and he screams if only to drown out the sickly wet sound that accompanies such an action.

"_I love you_," is whispered into the air between them, almost lost not in the wind but in the sobs torn from the warrior's throat. Yubel drops the skin and hair onto the ground beside them with only the muted scratchy, shifting sound of the sands parting to receive it. The scalp sinks into the white and is gone. "You feel it, too, don't you? Tell me you love me."

"Stop it!"

"_Tell me I'm the only one!_" she commands, her hands snapping out for his throat, fingers squeezing the air from his windpipe. Her white hair is streaked with Johan's blood where it falls over her shoulder as she leans forward, adding the weight of the puppet to the grip at the end of those strong arms. It is crushing him, and Juudai tries to struggle, tries to twist his body away or free his arms, but the stinking corpse still has him and he cannot escape. He thrashes ineffectually against them, able only to scream and cry for them to stop; he is as powerless as a child, and perhaps that is more terrifying than even the cruelty he is forced to witness. Juudai begs for this nightmare to end, for Johan to finally be safe.

She is squeezing his neck tighter and tighter until he is unsure how the delicate cartilage of his trachea remains intact. His vision swims, hazy on the edges as darkness swallows his periphery. He hears her repeat the order – "_Love only me_!" – in her own voice this time, shaking him by the throat like a beast with a piece of meat. His head smacks into the ground, once, twice, three times, and he closes his eyes against the sight of her dark, sneering features and those mismatched eyes gleaming with mocking delight.

"_Juudai_!" his name is screamed, the tone filled with fear and concern and panic, and for a moment, he cannot remember the last time he heard anyone but himself sound like that, cracking on the high note of the final vowel. The corpse's hold falters, the grip twisting unnaturally before falling away into the sand. Juudai's reaction is immediate and uncontrolled; he lashes out, his hand clenching into a fist –

* * *

– that lands rather solidly along a bony jawline. Juudai's eyes flutter open in time to see pale skin and teal hair fall out of sight, leaving him to stare up at the dark ceiling rafters of his dorm room. The floor beneath him is cool, dry and solid. He lurches forward into a sitting position, breath coming in fast and uneven gulps.

Beside him, the figure is sprawled on the carpet, hands at its face and moaning faintly, attracting his attention. Juudai's gaze darts over, catching on that obnoxiously familiar, all-too feminine Obelisk uniform.

"_Johan_?" The shock of seeing the foreigner again, this time whole and unmarred, leaves Juudai gaping stupidly at the other boy, who props himself up on one elbow, rubbing tenderly at his bruising jaw. A smile is offered up into the silence between them, and Johan waves to him with one hand. The slow, unconcerned pace of their interaction makes the warrior want to rip his hair out. He settles for just shouting. "What are you doing here?"

"You were screaming; what was I supposed to—?"

"Get out."

"Juudai?" there it is again: that awful, worrying tone, the furrowing of brows and deeply concerned frown. He tries to console himself with the fact that this is really Johan now. It has to be, because Juudai feels awake now, and his throat burns from the heat and sand of the white desert, from hours of wandering and screaming. But he does not feel consoled by this knowledge. He tightens his jaw and redirects the glare he cannot give to the monster responsible at the boy in front of him instead.

"_I said _'_get out_!'" he lashes out at the foreigner the way that he wishes he could lash out at Yubel. Her words are still echoing in his head, and some part of him knows that it isn't safe for the other boy in here with Yubel.

No.

It isn't safe for Johan _with him_, because Juudai isn't strong enough, not yet. But maybe, one day, he will be. He'll be strong enough to be the hero again, and Johan won't have to worry about dark shadows rising up to get him; he won't have to look over his shoulder to make sure that Juudai is still holding the monsters at bay. But not yet. Right now, Juudai is still dangerous, because Yubel is still here, still hating and possessive and lonely even as he feels her thoughts rousing sluggishly in the back of his head as if she were just waking up.

_I had a wonderful dream. . ._ he imagines she whispers to him, as he watches Johan pick himself up off the floor. The foreigner gives him a pleading look but walks slowly towards the door. He is giving Juudai time to change his mind, just like he did last time, and the time before, and every time they have seen each other since coming back from the Dark World. Juudai bites down on his tongue. There is nothing to say, but Johan pauses with his hand on the knob anyway, half-turning with an offer that, in a way, they both know the warrior has to refuse:

"Whatever you're going through, you don't have to do it alone. If you need me, I'm here."

"Get out," he can only repeat the command, fearful that anything more will betray the tremble in his voice. The whispering in his head continues, and he drops his head so Johan doesn't have to see the way he squeezes his eyes shut like he might cry.

_You and me. . .alone in the world, forever. . ._

He hears Johan exhale loudly, a sound of bitter defeat, too much exasperation to quite be a sigh. The door opens briefly, and then slams close, and the hero is left alone in the low light of his dorm room.

_It was my Heaven,_ she purrs, and if she had a form or the gate was weaker between the two worlds, Juudai knows she would wrap her arms around him and nuzzle his neck in that strange, affectionate way that she always wanted to touch him but never could. His hands clench into fists on top of his thighs, and he wonders what it will take for him to be strong enough to never have to be afraid again.

He wishes he could tell her that she is his Hell.


End file.
